Recommended Chinese Notebooks

Just like my recommended tablet list, these are laptops I have owned, tested and reviewed that come recommended by me. Since it’s early 2018 I don’t recommend anyone buy laptops powered by the older Atom x5 or x7 Cherry Trail. The latest generation of laptops are not only better built (Some with full metal designs) But with options such as M.2 SSD slots, they have the Intel Apollo Lake series of chips powering with better GPU’s, native VP9 and HEVC decoding. Very soon we will have the Gemini Lake N4100 laptops.

The Apollo Lake chips are good for light tasks, such as editing docs, multi-tabs in Chrome, and Edge with many tabs open. Some light multitasking and older or light games such as Counter Strike and League of Legends on low resolutions and visual settings. They are not good for video editing, heavy gaming, and any demanding 3D work. One of the best features of the Apollo Lake laptops is the great battery life of 8 hours and in some cases even more and their price.

These are ideal for first notebooks too and secondary travel notebooks where someone already has a powerful PC for heavy tasks like gaming and video editing.

Recommended Apollo Lake powered notebooks for light tasks:

#1 Teclast F7:

The Teclast F7 is very similar to the EZBook 3L Pro, 14.1″ 1080p IPS that is either glossy or matte, a with full metal design, M.2 2242 SATA3 SSD support, 6GB of RAM, Intel wireless AC, Sandisk64GB eMMC 5.1 and battery life good for 7-8 hours of web browsing depending on the power limit set. Its bios is fully unlocked and over all the speakers, webcam and mics are better than the EZBook 3 Pro’s.

Almost identical to the Tecalst F7 as they come from the same ODM in south korea, the EZbook 3L Pro has a power limit of 6W and no setting in the bios. It has either a matte TN panel or matte IPS it’s down to luck, and the same exact full metal design, M.2 2242 SATA3 SSD support, 6GB of RAM, Intel wireless AC, Sandisk64GB eMMC 5.1 and battery life good for 7-8 hours of web browsing. See the EZBook 3L Pro Vs Tecalst F7 comparison for more info.

After the release of the Teclast F7, the EZBook 3 Pro is the second best and still one of the cheapest and best allrounder. The Jumper EZbook 3 Pro has full metal design, M.2 2242 SATA3 SSD support, 6GB of RAM, Intel wireless AC, 64GB eMMC 5a matte 1080p display and battery life good for 7-8 hours of web browsing.

Chuwi is the first to have a backlit keyboard, 8GB of RAM and 128GB eMMC 5.1 spec drive Apollo Lake laptop. The build is similar to other models. Full metal. Mini HDMI out, 2 x USB 3.0 ports and MicroSD reader and it also has the usual offerings, 37Wh battery good for up to 8 hours. Intel Wireless AC 3165 chipset with BT 4.1. The screen is the second best I’ve reviewed. A bright glossy glass-covered fully laminated display with a maximum of 560 lux. Due to the fully laminated process, blacks are deep and colors vibrant. Overall a Celeron N3450 great laptop, but the most expensive by far!

The best screen in a budget notebook and best keyboard. Chuwi’s lapbook 12.3 has the same panel used in the 2017 Surface Pro and Surface Pro 4. As a result, the screen has 99% RGB coverage & 267 PPI. The keyboard is also the best I’ve used in an Apollo Lake to date. It’s powered by a Celeron N3450, 6GB LPDDR3 RAM, 64GB eMMC 5, Wireless AC and easy access M.2 2242 SSD slot.

Recommended Core i5/i7 powered notebooks:

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro:The largest of the Mi Notebook’s from Xiaomi. The 15.6″ Pro model has either 8th gen Intel Core i5 8250U or i7 8550U CPU’s which are quad-core. 8GB or 16GB of DDR4 2400Mhz RAM, super quick NVMe Samsung PM961 SSD’s and fast Intel Wireless AC 8265. Like the 13.3″ and 12″ models it also has a spare SSD slot inside for adding another SSD.

Recommended Core M3 powered notebooks:

The Core M3’s pack a lot more power than the Apollo Lakes laptops and normally offer a more premium build and more RAM options. The only downside is the more powerful chip consumes more power so battery life isn’t as good as the Apollo Lakes.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 12:

Now updated with the latest Core M3 the Kaby Lake 7Y30, Xiaomi’s Mi Notebook Air 12, comes with 4GB 128GB SATA3, 256GB NVMe and 8GB 256GB NVMe options. The build quality, backlit keyboard, and touchpad are excellent. The 1080p screen is bright and vivid covered with Gorilla Glass for notebooks. Depending on what model you buy there is either a spare SATA3 or NVMe bay for adding your own 2280 drive. It has Wireless AC, USB 3.1 Type-C port and quick charging.

The Cube Thinker i35, is a premium laptop from Cube. Powered by a Core M3-7Y30, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SATA3 SSD. Its standout feature is a brilliant fully laminated Surface Book screen. It also supports an N-Trig stylus, the same as the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book. It has Wireless AC, a large touchpad and its screen folder back almost completely flat.

EZbook 3L Pro touchpad is one of the largest and a very decent precision one. But that laptop sadly comes with a TN panel. The EZbook 3 Pro V4 has a good touchpad, the Cube iWork5X also good, Chuwi Lapbook Air again good and the Cube Thinker i35’s. They are all precision touchpads and I have no issues with them. The Chuwi Lapbook 12.3’s isn’t the greatest. Not a precision one and harder to use with those finer movements.

Thanks a lot for you quick reply. I’m having the worst experience with it but maybe i just need to tinker more and look into driver update possibilities & settings more. I will look for it in the forum and hope it will change my experience 🙂 Thanks

Don’t drop this, my wife did and the the screen is cracked in the corner so the hinge is exposed. Actually the hinge is poorest thing about this even before it was dropped the hinge become loose and make a sharp crack noise when you closed the lid. that was after about 2 to 3 months.

Hi, I am on a dilemma; I need a tablet with pen support mostly but have serious doubts about quality of Cube Mix Plus. It seems Xiaomi air 12 has better quality. The most important factor for me is “quality”. What do you suggest, Chris?

I like the way you segregated the various notebooks based on their architecture. If I may, I would add a more “full fledged laptop” section, containing the likes of the Xiaomi Air 13. I mean laptops with regular core iX processors. I know that this is maybe going a bit above the other categories, and that not that many Chinese makers are going into this market, but if it becomes more current to see those kinds of laptops, this might be a nice idea.

Anyway, keep up the good work to enlighten us about Chinese tablets. 🙂

I was thinking of adding the Core i5/i7 models but I have only tested two, well three of them. Xiaomi Mi Air 13 2016 and 2017 models. And the disaster that is the Voyo Vbook V3 i5 6200U. Really need more to make a list. I’ll update this as required with version such as the yoga hinge style ones (Cube iwork 5X)

That is good to hear. Indeed Chinese manufacturers need to provide new laptops with those powerful chips. We can see on Aliexpress some desktop computers (even gaming ones, with fancy GeForce 1070 and the like), so maybe after some time they’ll hop into the laptop market, but will it be with the quality of a Xiaomi product, this I am not sure.
But I will gladly read any review you have with a “powerful” portable machine.

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